1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image pickup apparatus and a switching-over method for the same. In particular, the invention relates to an image pickup apparatus which outputs an image corresponding to a situation of a subject to the outside, and a switching-over method for the image pickup apparatus including a far-infrared camera for detecting an electromagnetic wave in a far-infrared radiation region, and a visible-light camera for detecting a visible light.
2. Description of the Related Art
Heretofore, there have been conceivable the various techniques for detecting a specific object within an image-capturing range by executing image processing based on an image signal obtained by capturing an image. Such techniques have been used in monitoring cameras and the like. In addition, there have also been known not only a visible-light camera for capturing an image by detecting a visible light, but also a near-infrared camera and a far-infrared camera. These cameras can identify objects by detecting temperatures of objects of the image-capturing.
Now, the visible-light camera and the infrared camera (far-infrared camera) capture different objects each of which can be relatively identified owing to the respective different characteristics. For this reason, there is known a hybrid camera including both the functions of the visible-light camera and the far-infrared camera. In general, with the hybrid camera, when a user determines that a video picture captured by the visible-light camera becomes dark by seeing an image received from the hybrid camera, he/she switches the visible-light camera over to the far-infrared camera.
Here, there is known a technique for automatically switching the visible-light camera and the far-infrared camera over to each other in accordance with an ambient luminance (a level of a detected signal). This technique, for example, is described in Japanese Patent Laid-Open Nos. 2002-142228, 2005-006066, and 2005-286535. The excellent visibility is obtained in an image capturing night and day by using these techniques.